Help Advice on adjusting to Galaxy S6 after using only iOS devices?

[Android Advice]

Hi there,
First off, I'd like to say I am really happy to see such a helpful, intelligent, informative, and dependable forum for all of these android based questions everyone has. I hope you can help me out, as you have done with so many other people.

Info about me:
I've only used Windows, never a Mac. I currently run Windows 8.
I've only used apple handheld devices so far. Starting with an iPod nano 2nd gen, then an iPod touch 3rd gen, and an iPod touch 5th gen, and an Iphone 5. I enjoyed every upgrade, and I definitely do not hate apple, but with my recent phone contract upgrade I decided to switch to an android device. I saw tons of ads for the new HTC One M9, and I was really looking into getting that phone for about the past 5 months. Approaching the upgrade date, and after the phone was released, reviewers often said the everyday in-use battery life (even though factories/producers may say it does well) was below par. Knowing that I constantly use my phone, even if just for the purpose of messing around with all the features when I'm bored, battery life will be a huge factor in my satisfaction for future phones. After realizing the One M9 may not be my answer, I looked around again, and many solutions kept coming up. I knew that the new Samsung Note and LG G3 and G4 (if it's out by now?) have wonderful battery lives and have even more wonderful features, but I wanted to avoid the huge phablet screens. This pointed me to the Galaxy S6.

The Now:
I've got my 64 GB Galaxy S6 now (I figured the Edge version could wait until my next upgrade, if I do fall in love with the Galaxy family). So far, it is one hell of an upgrade. I am happy with it, because no matter the operating system it is better than my old phone, and that's all I really wanted to accomplish with this upgrade.
However, I feel like there are many things I am missing out on with this phone. My average length of battery life is about 9-13 hours depending on what I do with it. I know the usage of gameboy emulators kill the battery like crazy, so that can be controlled on my part. I've tinkered with many settings, disabled a lot of bloatware, made sure my brightness stays down, and I've read many other forums here that talk about battery life tricks on the galaxy, so there's no need for you to go in depth on this part.
1. My only question regarding battery usage is my cell standby. In my first couple days with the phone, I was getting into the 60-75% range of cell standby usage, and it came as a shock. With a few tweaks I've read about already, I've brought it down to an average 25-35% a day. The forums I've read about cell standby talk about solutions for non Verizon users, but I use Verizon. Is there anything you can help me with to lower it some more?

2. I upgraded from a 16 GB iPhone 5, which we both probably know had about 8 GB of "Other" stored in it from iOS 8. I am ready to fill up some of my new 64 GB with stuff. I've got a couple movies I purchased in iTunes, and I have over a thousand songs stored in it, both apple purchase and personal import. I know I can go in through my computer and manually transfer the music files to my phone, but I doubt that will get the movies transferred due to DRM crap. Is there a way, by means of a safe and free program, to get all of my iTunes media onto my Galaxy? Google brought up many different free programs, but none of them from a known and trusted site. I ask all of you trustworthy people to help me out with this so I don't risk getting PC malware and knocking myself backwards in this whole upgrade process. A few years ago I used Handbrake for media conversions, and I still have it installed, if that helps with anything.

3. I know there are tons of customizing options being thrown at me now, but what is there to do as far as how the home screen pages work? I know there are widgets, but is there something that can change the theme of the entire home screen? I just feel like I am only licking the top of the ice cream cone right now, I know there is more to taste. And what do I do with themes? Can I customize my own?

My last comment:
I am so far very pleased with my switch, but I am curious if I will stick with android in the long run. I am excited to see what my new friends here in androidforums have to say.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Hadron]

Welcome to the forum

That's a lot of questions, and as I don't own a Samsung there are some I can't really answer. In particular, I don't know how good the Samsung battery usage reporting is (e.g. what is it including under the heading "cell standby"). If you want to drill down into what is using your battery, GSam Battery Monitor is often recommended for getting more detailed information than the stock power monitor provides. Remember that these things are showing what fraction of your power usage comes from different things, so if e.g. you use the phone less one day the fraction that gets ascribed to cell standby will increase, because the same power drain amongst a lower total = a larger fraction.

I've never bought a movie from iTunes, and just did my transfers by copying stuff from my computer to the phone. DoubleTwist and iSyncr are things I've read other people use though, at least for music (don't know about movies).

As for homescreens, sure there are lots of options. The thing you need to know is that the desktops and app drawer are not part of the OS, but are provided by an app called a "launcher". The stock launcher which comes with the phone will let you change the widgets, wallpapers, change the items in the dock at the bottom, because any launcher does that. I don't know what other features the S6's stock launcher will have, but if you want more flexibility there are also other launchers you can get from the Play Store. Different launchers have different features, but you can have things varying from different "icon packs", different sized grids (more objects on the screen), the ability to have widgets overlap, folders on the screen/in the dock, docks with multiple pages which can be rotated independently from the desktop, homepages which can scroll in different directions, homepages which analyse your app usage and automatically organise your apps, launchers which allow you to download themes others have made or share your own, etc. And that's before you start on what you can do with widgets, some of which can replace homescreens for those who are that way inclined. You can get some idea of the range by sampling this thread (note: long, and started right back in 2009 when things were much simpler).

 

[Red_X]

Hi again, I'm the original poster. I just created an account so I'm betting this will show with a different name as the original post.

I checked out the launchers in the google play store and all I can say is wow. I knew there was a lot more that I was missing out on and although I don't know what I'm going to do with all this customization yet, I'm definitely going to enjoy figuring it out. I can finally see what android users mean when they say android offers way more customization options than what apple does.

I do understand what you're saying about the battery percent being relative to how much I worked the phone on that cycle, I'll see about getting that app you recommended and check out what's going on. I may just be expecting too much from a battery that isn't able to last as long as I imagined. Which is fine, no battery lasts forever.

When I searched them up, I read that DoubleTwist and iSyncr don't deal with movie files, so the iTunes question is still unanswered.

Thanks for the help so far!